The Raincountry Flyfishers provide an excellent opportunity to meet with others who fly fish or are interested in our sport. We meet the second and fourth Wednesdays of most months during our long cold Juneau winters. Generally we have a presenter on fly fishing techniques or experiences during the second Wednesday of each month. The fourth Wednesdays usually feature fly tying. All are invited and we hope to see you at our meetings.

Pages

Tags

Click on any post in the home page for additional info and to leave a comment.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

End of Our Meeting Season (2010/2011)

Friends,

As usual, I will be heading out to New England and will be returning to Juneau just in time for the silver salmon run. If anyone would like to hold Raincountry Flyfishers meetings or trips just let me know and I will be happy to arrange meeting sites. Otherwise, our next meeting will probably be the first Wednesday in February (2012). This is of course a late start. If someone else wants to get the club started earlier, go for it and I will assist as much as I can.

I have posted some new fishing reports on our web site. This is a new site and was set up by Grant Ficek of Resource Data, Inc. as a volunteer effort (read: great site with no cost to the club!) Grant is also spending some time keeping the website up-to-date and is always looking for more content from others. Please feel free to send him items to be posted (you can reach him via email - admin@raincountryflyfishers.com), or post personal messages to others by using the sites built-in message board. Fishing reports, interesting articles, and/or pictures would make this site really interesting to visit.

Grant is new to our sport and a great guy. I know he would enjoy fly fishing with club members, so if you have room or want to be a little safer in our bear-laden woods invite him to go fly fishing with you. Fair warning: He was a student in two of my Community Schools Fly Fishing/Fly Casting 101 classes last winter, so expect to have to a lot of remedial instruction :)

I want to recognize some high points of our past meeting season and those who made it possible. First, I would like to thank those involved with our Fly Casting Evening at Twin Lakes. The help of volunteer cooks was really appreciated and as in the past years, I would like to thank Brad again for bringing in demo rods and Mike Cole for his entry-level instruction. We also had a state-of-the-art switch and spey casting demonstrations.

Kaufmanns Streamborne and several other fly shops in the Seattle area have folded and we are very fortunate to have Brad's top-notch fly fishing shop downtown with a smooth mail-order capability. Juneau Fly Fishing Goods is really well stocked with local fly fishing equipment, flies, materials, and information. We shouldn't take his shop for granted, but really support it. They also have a knock-out web site full of great Alaskan sport fishing info. You can find a link to Brad's website in the "Links" section of this page.

I would also like to thank our local presenters and talent. Club dues of $10 means we can't afford to bring in outside presenters, which makes our local volunteers all that more precious. We had Mark Vinsel's excellent King Salmon presentation, Mark and Betty Fishers' (Foggy Mountain) slide show on bone fishing in the Bahamas, and Brad Elfers' demo on how to tie Fish Skill flies. Craig Freas brought us B.C. Steelheading, Sam Capp demoed his pink wooly bugger, and Luke Brockman showed off some of his excellent flies he ties including the hot Skagit Minnow. He along with his Dad also presented their trip for Belize bonefish, permit, and tarpon on the same day I did my report and bragged about the huge Trevally caught on Christmas Island with the Dotys.

I suspect I have not mentioned some of the others who kept us educated and entertained during our long cold winter and would like to extend my appreciation. Thanks to all those who contributed! During our non-meeting season, if you have something to share don't hesitate to have Grant post something on this site.

Anyone trekking down Cowee Creek will notice that the new "Bridges to Somewhere" constructed by club members in the fall were a very successful and strenuous project. Special thanks goes out to Garrett Goodman, Chuck Caldwell, Craig Freas, and David Athern.

Much of the success we had during this year is due to the extra efforts of Roger Harding, Chuck Caldwell, and Abby Lowell (Juneau Empire Outdoor Editor) in sending our our PSAs about our club activities.

In short, we had one of the our best years ever, but now it is time to go fishing! Please send in reports if you have had a particularly successful trip, or even if you didn't catch anything!